Overhead Mic-ing techniques!

[egan.]

large room: decca tree

Seriously, as overheads? Omni? How do you orient it? With the center over the drummers head?

 

[timislegend]

Seriously, as overheads? Omni? How do you orient it? With the center over the drummers head?

positioned in front of the drum kit.

then: spot mic the rest of the kit. (snare/kick)


considering the decca tree is used as a stereo room miking technique. it also lends to powerful overheads in a large room.

 

[egan.]

positioned in front of the drum kit.

then: spot mic the rest of the kit. (snare/kick)


considering the decca tree is used as a stereo room miking technique. it also lends to powerful overheads in a large room.

But that's just it, it seems more like room micing than OH's. It seems like you would still need to mic the cymbals closer and with something directional to get that to work in a modern rock/metal context. If you have some sample of some stuff you've done this way I'd be curious to hear them.

 

[timislegend]

But that's just it, it seems more like room micing than OH's. It seems like you would still need to mic the cymbals closer and with something directional to get that to work in a modern rock/metal context.

i guess it would be more room miking. but i find that given the proper room, kit and high spl omni mics (like dpa)... decca trees make really aggressive overheads with an outstanding stereo image.

you're probably right with regards to metal.

 

[BLUElightCory]

ORTF, angled so that both overheads are equidistant from the snare.

 

[John_C]

I love how people talk about getting things phase coherant with spaced pairs, as if it was possible (or totally desirable). If you REALLY spent ages getting mics perfectly equidistant from the middle of ONE point source of sound, all you'd have to do would be to move by a couple of cm and you'd already have comb filtering in the human hearing range. At lower frequencies (which is what people usually mean by in phase), you have more leeway; approx 0.3m difference between the distances from mic to source will just about give you problems at 1Khz. Anything near the edges of the drumkit is going to have completely wrong phase across everything above about 100Hz.

The point is is that PHASE DIFFERENCE IS GOOD! It's what gives you all of your perception of space and size. Get the kicks and snare sounding roughly in phase and then just forget about aligning the rest of the kit because it's a theoretical and practical impossibility.

 

[gabriel g.]

good point by skeksis!!!

Dont try to have everything phase accurate. The small delay between the room mic (s) and the close-mics gives you that big sound with no need for reverb.

The only important thing for me is, to have my stereo-ab in phase.
Dont like XY for it. ORTF works ok for me, but I prefer small or big ab, or spot-ab. Both with the snare in the center.
This gives you a great stereo-field and when you are high enough, you dont have that big problems with cymbals in the center.

With this technic I also never need to use the hihat mic because the great stereo image gives me a nice hihat on the left/right side.

 

[drew_drummer]

Get the kicks and snare sounding roughly in phase and then just forget about aligning the rest of the kit because it's a theoretical and practical impossibility.

Exactly... so... a certain amount of in-phaseness is GOOD.

No-one said anything remotely like 'make everything in phase' because as you said, it's practically impossible.

BUT...

Doing it with the kick and snare will balance the overheads and make them sound the most natural. Going all willy-nilly with the overheads and not paying attention to the timing of the impulses coming from the kick and snare is not going to give you a tight defined sound.

Imho and ime.

 

[drew_drummer]

Here's a question though!

I don't have enough preamps to spot mic every cymbal that our drummer uses, as well as do everything I want with the main kit. So could you have two front overheads and two rear overheads, and would that sound shit? Anyone every done that?

 

[colonel kurtz]

I love how people talk about getting things phase coherant with spaced pairs, as if it was possible (or totally desirable). If you REALLY spent ages getting mics perfectly equidistant from the middle of ONE point source of sound, all you'd have to do would be to move by a couple of cm and you'd already have comb filtering in the human hearing range. At lower frequencies (which is what people usually mean by in phase), you have more leeway; approx 0.3m difference between the distances from mic to source will just about give you problems at 1Khz. Anything near the edges of the drumkit is going to have completely wrong phase across everything above about 100Hz.

The point is is that PHASE DIFFERENCE IS GOOD! It's what gives you all of your perception of space and size. Get the kicks and snare sounding roughly in phase and then just forget about aligning the rest of the kit because it's a theoretical and practical impossibility.

i know damn well there's no way that you're ever going to get 100% phase coherency for the entire kit across the entire spectrum with a space pair of OH's...but if there's any one, single, thing that i want to be phase coherent, it's the snare - thus why i get both OH mics equidistant from it

also, it's not like it takes a long time to get both capsules the same distance from the source...i'll usually set up the right OH where i want it, then i'll tape a piece of string to the center of the snare and hold it up to the mic

then, after setting the left OH at the same height from the floor, i'll hold the end of the string and move around until i find a spot where i wanna put that mic, and stick it there. you're talking about an extra 3-4 minutes in setup, which can dramatically improve the sound of the snare in OH's.

 

[Force666]

Is there a specific reason to have the mics even distance from the floor? Most right-handed drummers kits cymbals are much farther from the snare on the right side than they are from the left. So I usually make the mic higher on the left side to compensate distance so both mics are even distance from the snare. Is this a no no for some reason?

 

[BLUElightCory]

Well, zoom into your tracks to the sample level, and find a kick. Then compare the signals on the overhead tracks and the kick direct microphone. 'In-phase' would mean that all microphones receive the signal at the same time.

You'll most likely have a bit of a timing difference. Ears perceive this as 'mushy' and your drums will not have the power behind them that they should.

You will have a timing difference, it's impossible not to. Time aligning the transient might favorably alter the phase relationship between the mics, but it's important to note that it won't put everything "in phase" because phase is both time and frequency dependent - so frequencies that weren't phase canceling before the transients were aligned might be canceling afterward.

I agree with skelsis regarding phasing and overheads, phase difference is what gives us stereo "width" and "depth" - get your snare centered (if you're into that) and use your ears and the rest will fall into place.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I like SDCs in ORTF or LDCs spaced. TLM 103s spaced pair into API is awesome.

 

[Trevoire520]

why not? Now you know how it sounds.

Because the whole concept behind a coincident pair is to get 2 DIRECTIONAL mic's as close as possible without touching, and using the angle between the mic's and the directionality of the pickup pattern to create a stereo image.
So using 2 omni mic's in a coincident pair is basically pointless as there's practically no difference between the lest and right channels. I bet if you recorded that clip into a DAW and flipped the phase of one side you'd be very, very close to having total silence.

It sounds exactly how I expected it to sound to be honest. Exactly the same as a single mono overhead, except it's took up 2 channels instead of one.
Now if he'd flicked the mic's onto figure 8 instead to get a blumlien setup, that would have been a good one to hear. Always loved that for room mic's but never heard it on overheads.

 

[egan.]

I agree with Trevoire. The only reason to do an omni coicident pair is if you don't understand the concepts involved. He also didn't do a very good job of placing them coincidentally. Ultimately sounds good = good however for the purposes of demonstrating techniques....

 

[NSGUITAR]

For you guys using the spaced pair technique:

Let's say you want to use 3 OH mics because the drummer has a lot of cymbals. Do you just use the 3:1 rule to know where to put the mics exactly, or do you so something different?

 

[arin]

that link was an awesome comparison!
fuck i learn alot on here!

i liked the sound of the ORTF the best, followed by the spaced pair.

do you guys all have a prefference with overheads eg SDC VS LDC?

 

[AudioGeekZine]

For you guys using the spaced pair technique:

Let's say you want to use 3 OH mics because the drummer has a lot of cymbals. Do you just use the 3:1 rule to know where to put the mics exactly, or do you so something different?

Measure equal distance from snare.

 

[C_F_H_13]

Measure equal distance from snare.

+1.

 

[Trevoire520]

that link was an awesome comparison!
fuck i learn alot on here!

i liked the sound of the ORTF the best, followed by the spaced pair.

do you guys all have a prefference with overheads eg SDC VS LDC?

Depends on what you want. SDC's tend to be more accurate, and react to transients faster due to having a lighter diaphragm. LDC's react a bit slower so you lose some transient detail.

I think the majority of guys here are using SDC's, but to be honest you can get great results with either!